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All The Random Thoughts

There is so much swirling in my mind, and I can't seem to pinpoint anything. It's going to be incredibly random tonight.

First of all, I keep thinking that the shrub at the end of the driveway needs trimmed. And it does. Luke suggested that I hire a professional, but I scoffed. Professionals are for people who want the job done right. I'm skilled at mutilating shrubbery. And with that one right beside the road, the whole world can laugh at it. The problem is that it's a huge ball of a thing, and I'm not sure how to trim it into something smaller.

And speaking of cutting smaller, there's that forsythia in the garden that I was just tired of dealing with. I kind of knew when I put it there that it would be temporary, but what I didn't realize was that the roots would take hold somewhere down as deep as China and I wouldn't be able to get that thing out for love or money. I cut it off right down to the ground, but it's been growing back with a vengeance. Every branch I cut off is growing three or four shoots from it. If I don't win the battle, that thing is going to be the biggest forsythia the world has ever seen. I don't really want that. I want it to die. I have a plan to kill it that involves gasoline and a lighter, but have yet to find the time to go implement that plan. I'm sure the kids will want to be on hand to see the epic failure or success. Either way, it's bound to be a good time.

I didn't have time to kill the forsythia because we've been preserving food. It's that time of year, and that's pretty much all we do at the end of August. The Freezing Of Corn is the one thing that makes the kids declare they are soooo ready to go back to school. Every day when Sam gets home from work, the boys pick a few sacks of corn, the kids all husk it, I boil, and Sam cuts. It gets frozen in quart bags so that we have wonderfully fresh corn to eat year-round. The kids question daily how much corn do we really need, but my word. We're feeding an army up in here. We're currently somewhere around 70 bags of corn, which means roughly every 10 days we can have corn since it takes 2 bags to feed the family. No, we don't have enough, but we're done regardless.

I made dill pickles this year. New recipe, n'at. Fingers crossed that they taste good, because with 9 quarts of them, it's a lot of pickles to not like. We have made what are called icicle pickles for several years now, and we started a few gallons of those as well. The process to pickle them is long and involved, but they're so worth it. Yes, our priorities are corn and pickles. Despite all my gardening efforts, the tomatoes got blight again this year so we have nothing for salsa or tomato sauce.

And that's what I have today. Mostly. Besides this, because we have an abundance of spiders here. Not something we're proud of or anything, but truth nonetheless.